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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26249482">From This Point Forward</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/direSin/pseuds/direSin'>direSin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Longest Distance [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, F/M, One Shot, Smut</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:48:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,710</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26249482</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/direSin/pseuds/direSin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“After all this time you choose to fix your heart on a woman who’s like as not to chew it up and spit it out.” The bard shook his head. “For gods’ sake, Geralt, why?”</p><p>“You’re the poet. You figure it out.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt/Yennefer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Longest Distance [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906921</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>From This Point Forward</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set directly after <em>The Last Wish</em> short story.</p><p>No part of the Netflix show has any bearing on this story and will ever have any bearing on anything I write in this fandom.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He couldn’t stop looking at her. He had no idea what to do about that. Moments ago he’d been kissing her and she’d been kissing him and there had been no room for thought.</p><p>“Yen,” he said and waited. </p><p>She didn’t meet his eyes. </p><p>He leaned up to brush his lips against hers - very lightly, or he’d fall headlong into the wonder of her mouth. <em> Later </em> , he thought, <em> and a time after that, and on and on </em> - He found he was holding his breath and cut himself short. </p><p>She was finally looking at him. And that’s when he knew it would never happen. They would never happen.</p><p>He lay with his eyes shut tight, not seeing, not thinking, and listened to her move around collecting her things until he couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed himself off the floor, wishing he had clothes on. He dressed quickly in the half-darkness of the room. Even if he knew what to say, what would be the point? There was a reason he didn’t have lasting affairs. He wasn’t built for them. </p><p>He should be the one to walk away.</p><p>“Where do we go from here?” he asked instead, buckling up his boots and getting to his feet.</p><p>“I go home,” she said, with just the slightest edge to her voice. She’d come up behind him, close enough to touch.</p><p>Words welled up in his throat but none came out. He looked down at his hands. She clasped his wrists lightly, turning his hands over, and skimmed her fingertips over the burns on his palms.</p><p>“You don’t have to,” he protested, shivering a little at the touch of her magic.</p><p>She smiled quickly - too quickly. “I can do this much.”</p><p>In the silence that fell between them he could hear water dripping from the hole in the roof. “I’ll walk you out,” he said, an emptiness in his chest.</p><p>“I think I know the way.” There was a flicker of humor in the violet eyes but other than that they gave nothing away.</p><p>Pale daylight limned her silhouette in the doorway for a moment before she was gone. He stood in the middle of the ruined tavern, the air around him still awash with her scent, and everything that had happened that day caught up with him at last. It was as if he had taken a brutal beating that had lasted for hours and only now let himself feel the pain in every part of his body. His heart ached more than the rest of him.</p><p>He paced around for a while, occasionally kicking at the rubble strewn all over the floor. It didn’t help much. He ought to go, find Dandelion and Chireadan and the mayor, get himself a stiff drink or three and a place to rest.</p><p>He wasn’t ready to face the world just yet.</p><p>“Geralt, are you there?” Dandelion called out from the doorway.</p><p>Geralt felt his mouth twist in a bitter smile. “Yes,” he answered after a pause that was a touch too long.</p><p>“I got tired of waiting. They serve veritable piss for beer at The Tipsy Hornet.” The bard made his way toward him with slow careful balance, navigating between the fallen beams and smaller chunks of debris. “Are you alone? Where is Yennefer?”</p><p>“On her way to Vengerberg, I imagine.”</p><p>“Oh? I take it you didn’t bind your fate to hers?”</p><p>Geralt did his best not to wince. It was the last thing he wanted to discuss with anyone, let alone Dandelion who was likely to make some ridiculous ballad of it that he’d have to hear in every damned tavern for the next decade.</p><p>He ran the fingers of one hand over the palm of the other. The blisters had faded but he remembered where they were. He had the strangest feeling - like he was hanging over an abyss, holding on to its edge with weakening fingers, and a voice in his head was telling him to let go.</p><p>Dandelion looked at him sidelong. “The priest said it was the only way to save her. But surely - ”</p><p>“I have to go,” Geralt said, half to himself.</p><p>“Go? Where?”</p><p>“How are the horses?”</p><p>“Nothing happened to them as far as I know. Geralt, what - ”</p><p>Geralt didn’t answer.</p><p>Dandelion followed him to the stable. “You don’t do anything by halves, do you,” he said, squinting in the near-dark as he watched Geralt saddle his mare.</p><p>The witcher frowned at him over Roach’s withers. “What’s that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“After all this time you choose to fix your heart on a woman who’s like as not to chew it up and spit it out.” The bard shook his head. “For gods’ sake, Geralt, why?”</p><p>“You’re the poet. You figure it out.”</p><p>The late-afternoon sun peeked coyly through the clouds as he passed the city gates. He rode past sparse trees, past a distant cluster of huts with thatched roofs, across a shallow brook where his horse’s hooves kicked up spurts of silvery droplets. He took the long stretch of the open plain at a gallop but it was no use. He slowed once he reached the main road, letting the mare settle into a brisk trot.</p><p>She couldn’t have beaten him by much but he didn’t catch up with her in the next hour, or the next. She had to be traveling by horse - the fight with the djinn hadn’t left her enough reserves to open a portal. But he had no idea what kind of mount she was riding, whether she might have changed her attire; he couldn’t even be sure she had taken the main road. All he had was a guess and a gut feeling. There was no village big enough for a half-decent inn until Piana. A middling town that sprung up around a busy river crossing, it couldn’t have more than a handful of inns. If he were to find her at all, Piana would be his best chance.</p><p>Twilight had deepened by the time he rode up to The Countess that he figured to be the best lodging in town. His coin purse was considerably lighter than he liked when the innkeeper at last conceded that yes, Yennefer of Vengerberg had taken a room for the night.</p><p>Geralt paused at the top of the stairs to take a deep breath, and another before he knocked on the door and her voice said, “Come in,” from behind it.</p><p>She stood by the window that had been left ajar, looking out into the night, her back to him, the lamplight gleaming softly in her hair. She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “Geralt,” she said. There was no surprise in her tone and he had to swallow against the sudden thickness in his throat.</p><p>He crossed the room and took the mug she was holding - mulled wine, going by the scent of cinnamon and cloves - and set it on the table. Her hand fit between his, small and cool. When he kissed her he felt the flicker of her tongue through her parted lips; he answered it, forgot to breathe and had to break away, gasping for air.</p><p>“Geralt,” she said again, low and intimate, as his mouth slid down her neck. With his thumb he tilted back her head and licked at her throat; her moan made it vibrate under his lips.</p><p>They undressed each other without speaking. Candlelight moved over her skin. There was an almost feral quality to her smile as she shoved his trousers off his hips, then her mouth was on his again and there was a sweet curve of waist and hip under his palms. And her hands, gods, her hands, sliding down his stomach to find the length of his cock. The shock of her touch made him cry out; he dropped his head onto her shoulder, shuddering as she stroked him. Her nipples were hard against his forearm and he couldn’t resist cupping one breast in his hand. When he sucked on a nipple, stiff against his tongue, she cradled his head, breathing fast and shallow.</p><p>He lifted her off her feet without taking his mouth off her and carried her to the bed. She sat on the edge of it, watching him as he knelt in front of her. His lips brushed over her thighs and she shivered, tangling her fingers in his hair. He let her guide his head, tongue flicking out to touch her clit, savoring her impatience and the salty tang of her, the way her hand clenched in his hair. Her thighs bracketed his face, narrowing his field of vision - narrowing the world to her alone, the taste and scent of her, the breathless sounds she made, the wet heat of her under his mouth. Her fingers dug into his shoulder until her nails pierced his skin but she was full of revelations that matter far more. He had found her out, unraveled her, and she tensed against him, arching, her body surrendering to him even if her mind never would.</p><p>She fell back on the bed, panting, her face flushed, and looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes. She was still trembling a little when he climbed over her and caught her lips with his mouth. Her hand curled around his cock to guide him inside. She wrapped her legs around his waist, goading him on, and he thrust into her with growing desperation. The intensity of it turned him inside out; it was nothing he could explain, this searing, twisting joy that scoured him raw. On the edge of letting go, he could feel her tighten. She clutched at his back and said his name as she came and he fucked her harder, knowing that he would never do this again, that this was the last time, until the swell of pleasure crested, wiping out all thought.</p><p>She kissed him, afterwards, and even rested her head against his shoulder, like they were an ordinary couple and this was the start of something. When she left it was going to hurt like nothing he’d ever felt. It already did.</p><p>He knew he should go, now. He didn’t move. After a while he pretended to sleep.</p>
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